Marriage And Marriage In Jane Austen's Sense And Sensibility

In Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, and Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens, two proposals, despite their few effective lines, end up being horrendously uneffective. In the first, William Collins proposes to Elizabeth Bennett, and in the latter, Bradley Headstone-his last name, which he will need after he dies from the painful embarrassment of his rejection- proposes to Lizzie Hexam. What makes a marriage proposal successful is a display of commitment, intimacy, and passion- though not too much or too little of any one factor! A lack of one or more of these factors, which both proposals are guilty of, will lead the proposer down the path of one of the main struggles of wooing: rejection. Both men do make one or two seemingly effective statements.

Finding a partner for marriage during the Regency era was through courtships, and courtship were more based on the money and same social classes. Do not considered as marrying below themselves. When Lady Catherine heard about her nephew Darcy fall in love with Elizabeth which she was in the lower social class as him, she told Elizabeth, “My daughter and my nephew are formed for each other. They are descended on the maternal side, from the same noble line;”. Lady Catherine’s metaphor demonstrated that she thinks Elizabeth is too poor to marry Mr Darcy.

However, they still consider themselves above others in the social ladder. Therefore, Catherine Earnshaw -the daughter in the family- cannot marry the man she loves since he is an adopted orphan. He would not be able to provide for her and she wants to live a life in luxury and comfort. She instead chooses to marry a man in her own class. Sense & Sensibility was written by Jane Austen in the early 19th century.

Like many societies and cultures around the world, a fantasy is created in which greed and vanity strip away love and admiration from the strong marital grips we are accustomed to. Jane Austen beautifully illustrates a world where this vain fantasy becomes each woman’s reality. Love simply dissolves into oblivion while greed and arrogance fill its empty, forgotten space. This toxic, distorted image of marriage storms through 1800s England corrupting relationships and mocking the foundations of marriage; however, Austen implements an opposing force that has the ability to trounce this destructive change in the once traditional, loving society.

They were not entitled to become educated or employed and instead had to spend all of their time training to become the ideal domestic wife, through sewing or playing the piano to prove their worth. With this disadvantage, financial stability was the top and most important quality when finding a man to marry since they could not attain that independently. The women in Pride and Prejudice were competitive to win the best man they could find, which created the plot for this novel. Writer Daryl Jones described them as, “feisty, intelligent heroine in financially straitened circumstances [that] overcome the opposition of a backward-looking tradition and authority, as well as the preconceptions about class and money to which her own sceptical intelligence has initially predisposed her, to win the hand of a man who is effectively the richest man in England.” (Jones pg. 93).

“Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance,” Charlotte says to Elizabeth in the novel, Pride and Prejudice, written by Jane Austen. Charlotte Lucas is an intelligent, twenty-seven-year-old, single lady of Netherfield Park that is desperate to marry to get out of her parents’ house. Thus, she ends up marrying the ridiculous Mr. Collins and being one of the many that ended up married by the end of the novel. Samina Ashfaq and Naisr Jamal Khattak from the University of Peshawar both write and analyze about how each one of the relationships show a different extent of satisfaction in Love, Infatuation, and Compromise in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

The idea of life without having a financial support is a matter of great consternation, especially for 2 women. Thus, as illustrated in Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma, many people are taken in low esteem and in high esteem just on the basis of financial condition and women are suffered badly in this era. In these three popular novels, the heroines of Austen are facing the harsh realities of the deprived society. Elinor and Marianne Dashwood were deprived of their manor by their uncle after their father’s death and then they are left with little money.

‘Emma’ is a tale of marriages; it opens with the marriage of Miss Taylor and Mr. Weston and ends with more weddings (Johnston, 1997). Readers who misread Austen may interpret her discussion regarding marriage as an endorsement, but such is not the case; Austen uses these marriages to convey that it was a woman’s sole purpose (Johnston, 1997; Moffat, 1991). However, fiercely independent Emma defies social expectations of a woman in the 19th century. Emma is the personification of Austen’s advocacy of women’s rights and equality of the sexes (Moffat, 1991). Emma is a strong female, possessing the luxury of independence.

Readers of Jane Austen can easily find out what marriage means and how its important social status is to women of Austen's time. In Pride and prejudice Jane Austen used the characters to tell her deep feeling of love and friendship with its ups and downs. For instance you have Darcy and Elizabeth who are the two heroines of this novel. Elizabeth's love is very important. At the beginning, Elizabeth refused to accept Darcy's pursue.

Sadly, what could have been an engagement fell through when Lefroy’s family intervened. They did not consider Austen to be a suitable match as she did not have much to offer in terms of wealth. The role of wealth and class would become constant in Austen’s novels dealing with love and marriage. It is probable that her disappointment over this brief romance affected the content of her writing. Austen would continue on as a single woman in full pursuit of a professional writing career.

‘The immediate Austen family was warm and affectionate. George Austen was fond of his wife and children.’ George Austen was a scholar and encouraged the children in reading and learning. The first year of her life Jane spent in the family of Elizabeth Littlewood, who nursed her.

While each character displays the feud between sense and sensibility, two characters, in particular, are followed throughout the entire novel and are evaluated in their most vulnerable moments. Moments of the book, both cheerful and despondent, give a passageway to the personalities of Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne. As the duo is followed in their love struck journey we see blatant symbol. Elinor and Marianne superbly emulate the two-parted title of Sense and Sensibility respectively. (Tulloch,

“In her late teens Austen had received the attention of suitors, and in 1795 she fell in love with Tom Lefroy, they became engaged, but Lefroy broke off the engagement when his family forbade the union” (Aronson 3). Six years, later, in the summer of 1801, Austen fell in love with a clergyman; “After months of harmless flirtations Austen was expecting a proposal” though she never received one because he died rather unexpectedly before he had the change (Dwyer 22). Austen never married though she did have the papers drawn up for the marriage to her and a man that is a work of fiction (Dwyer 20). Just four short years after the death of the clergyman, Austen’s beloved father died leaving her, her mother and her sister with virtually nothing (Dwyer 11). Jane Austen wrote authentic love stories despite her own tragic

Did you ever see her? A smart, stilish girl they say, but not handsome. I remember her aunt very well…she married a very wealthy man” (Austen 184). Willoughby despite loving Marianne marries Miss Gray for her money because of his financial state. Instead of love, money becomes a determiner for the choice of marriage, making it a commodity rather than a

In the novel, Austen presents the marriage between Charlotte Lucas and Mr. Collins on the basis of convenience and money rather than love and sympathy. Mr. Collins is very arrogant, narrow-minded, foolish and pompous clergyman - he is obsessed with Lady Catherine de Bough and will only marry to please her. Charlotte Lucas in contrast is a very plain and well educated woman however makes a decision to marry Mr. Collins. Although they are an "unsuitable match," Charlotte desires to marry not for love, but simply for security. One of the most important factors of a successful matrimony is understanding your partner and creating a bond.